The Bastard Son of the Dragon God

Chapter 52: The Prince’s Mutiny

He did not wake up. He was simply dragged, agonizingly and, back into consciousness by the suffocating sensation of his own failing lungs.

Total, absolute, unbroken darkness.

Sound and heat were gone. Only a crushing, unimaginable weight pressed down on every single millimeter of his body. Eshiren tried to inhale, a desperate, instinctual reflex to draw air, but his chest could not physically expand. A slab of jagged iron was resting directly across his ribs, pinning him relentlessly to a brutal bed of shattered concrete and pulverized bedrock.

Panic, raw, biological, and feral, spiked in his blood. He tried to thrash, tried to kick his legs, tried to scream for Lyalina or his father, but he was immobilized. The air was gone. He was entombed in the dark, buried alive beneath the ruins of the Dragon Empire.

His last coherent memory was the satisfying click of the heavy brass detonator beneath his hand, the blinding white flash of the volatile chemical severance compound igniting simultaneously across the primary valves, and then... nothing. The immense blast should have vaporized him. It should have flash-cooked his internal organs, melted his skin, and reduced his bones to fine white ash long before the millions of tons of the Central Mana-Manifold collapsed on top of him.

He shouldn’t be alive to feel this suffocation.

Eshiren forced his panicking mind to focus, fighting the overwhelming biological urge to succumb to the darkness. He forcefully engaged his right-side channels, attempting to summon even a tiny, flickering spark of Dragon-fire just to see the confines of his grave, but the connection to his core was dead. His Dragon core was exhausted, drained and dormant, hollowed out by the violent, unnatural resonance he had forced upon it during the desperate fight with Vraek’s elite White-Scale guard.

He shifted his focus to the left side, pulling desperately on the Ohn-Thari root.

The response was weak, agonizingly slow, but it was there. A faint, warm, sepia-toned light began to bleed slowly from his skin, illuminating the suffocating, claustrophobic space.

He wasn’t crushed. He was encased in a spherical, flawless bubble of Golden Magic. It was transparent, looking like strong, slightly distorted glass, holding back the jagged iron slab and thousands of tons of pulverized rock, dirt, and ash pressing down from above.

Eshiren stared at the glowing golden barrier in absolute, terrified awe. Consciously casting a shield when he hit the detonator never crossed his mind. The geometric intent required for an Imperial ward remained unformed. He had fully accepted his death. The Golden Magic had reacted instinctively, a defensive reflex born from the ancient resonance of the deep roots and the murals he had just seen. It had recognized his royal blood, recognized his intent to protect the planet, and it had fundamentally, conceptually refused to let him die.

But the bubble was shrinking.

The faint golden light was flickering erratically, the smooth edges of the sphere groaning audibly under the unimaginable geological pressure of the collapsed manifold. Eshiren was suffocating. The oxygen inside the tiny, sealed magical pocket was almost gone, replaced by the heavy, toxic carbon dioxide of his frantic, shallow, terrified breaths.

He had miraculously survived the blast, but if he didn’t move now, he was going to suffocate slowly in his own beautiful, magical coffin.

Eshiren pushed his faintly glowing hands flat against the jagged iron slab resting directly on the top of the golden bubble. Without the raw kinetic strength of his Dragon core to shatter the heavy metal, alternative methods were required. He had to use the Golden Magic differently. It had to flow like water, acting over time rather than striking like a hammer.

He pushed his intent outward, focusing on the molecular structure of the metal. Soften. Age. Rust.

The Golden Magic flared slightly, washing over the heavy iron slab. It didn’t break the metal with concussive force; it altered the structural integrity of the oxidized iron, making it brittle, artificially aging it thousands of years in a matter of seconds.

Eshiren twisted his hips, slamming his bruised shoulder upward against the compromised iron. The slab shattered into a thousand rusted, jagged flakes, raining down around him inside the bubble, cutting his cheeks.

The pressure above him shifted. Thousands of pounds of loose rubble, crushed bio-magical piping, and pulverized bedrock cascaded downward into the void left by the iron, threatening to crush him beneath a landslide of dirt.

Eshiren quickly expanded the golden bubble upward, forcing the magic into a rigid, cylindrical shape. He was creating a vertical tunnel, pressing the dirt, ash, and jagged metal outward into the surrounding walls.

He began to dig.

It was agonizing, desperate, terrifying work. Without the explosive kinetic force of his Dragon core, he was weak, relying on his bruised, human muscles. Every upward inch required him to mentally stabilize the fragile golden tunnel while physically pulling himself up through the jagged, broken remnants of the Imperial manifold. His fingernails tore, bleeding sluggishly into the dirt. His lungs burned with a terrifying intensity, screaming for oxygen that wasn’t there. He had no idea how deep he was buried. The blast had severed the primary valves and brought the entire miles-wide structure down into the crater, but he couldn’t mathematically calculate the depth of the rubble.

Hours bled into a timeless, suffocating nightmare of repetitive motion. Grab, pull, push the magic upward. The golden light flickered dangerously, frequently threatening to collapse the tunnel and bury him forever.

Just one more foot, he told himself, his internal voice hoarse and feral, devoid of the sophisticated Vanguard training he had relied on for months. Just one more foot. For Lyalina. For Senreno.

His bleeding right hand broke through a dense layer of compacted ash and struck something hard, hollow, and distinctly metallic.

Eshiren pushed the Golden Magic upward with the last desperate surge of his strength, shattering the obstruction.

Stale, chemical-tasting air flooded into the narrow tunnel.

Eshiren gasped loudly, a horrible, wet sound. His lungs burned like they were filled with acid as they expanded rapidly, inhaling the beautiful, filthy, ash-choked air. He pulled himself over the jagged, rusted edge of the obstruction, collapsing onto a relatively flat, unstable metallic surface.

He lay there for a long time in the dark, coughing up thick, black ash and specks of blood, his entire body trembling with profound, paralyzing exhaustion. The golden light finally faded from his skin, leaving him in deep, heavy gloom.

He forced his eyes open, trying to make sense of his surroundings through the pain.

He wasn’t on the surface. He was in one of the ruined, upper sublevels of the manifold.

The destruction was and terrifying to behold. The once-pristine, brutally efficient Imperial engineering was unrecognizable. thirty-foot-thick steel support pillars, designed to hold up millions of tons of equipment, were twisted and snapped like dry twigs. The biological piping was ruptured, bleeding dark, viscous, foul-smelling fluids across the heavily tilted, severely cracked flooring.

It was a physical manifestation of total, catastrophic collapse. Senreno’s chemical severance compound hadn’t just broken the primary regulatory valves; it had fundamentally severed the manifold’s structural tethers to the bedrock. The entire structure had pancaked downward into the crater.

Eshiren pushed himself up to his hands and knees, wincing as his cracked ribs protested. The silence here was different from the peaceful, ancient serenity of the deep roots. This silence felt heavy, oppressive, filled with the settling groans of thousands of tons of highly unstable metal slowly shifting its weight.

He needed to find a maintenance stairwell, an exhaust vent, or a crack leading to the surface. He needed to find Senreno and Lyalina and tell them it was over. The machine was dead. The extraction had stopped.

As he staggered forward through the wreckage, favoring his right leg, a sudden, sharp burst of harsh static crackled loudly through the gloom.

Eshiren froze, dropping aggressively behind a slab of fallen concrete, his hand reaching reflexively for a trench-blade he no longer possessed.

The loud static came from a crushed, sparking Imperial comms terminal pinned beneath a fallen support beam. The glass screen was shattered, but the heavy acoustic runes embedded securely in the base of the console were still desperately, automatically looping a pre-recorded emergency broadcast on all Imperial frequencies.

"—all loyal Imperial forces stationed within the Azarian sphere," the voice declared loudly.

It was Prince Krazmakor.

But the young Prince’s voice didn’t sound panicked, defeated, or horrified by the total destruction of his engineering project. He sounded grandiose, fiercely triumphant, and, dangerously opportunistic.

"The catastrophic detonation of the Central Mana-Manifold was not an act of local, primitive sabotage," Krazmakor’s recorded voice rang out in the ruined, dark sublevel, clear despite the heavy static. "It was an act of profound, treasonous incompetence by the First Heir, Prince Vraek."

Eshiren’s breath caught sharply in his throat. He crept carefully closer to the sparking terminal, listening in absolute, stunned disbelief.

"Prince Vraek arrived unannounced, illegally invoked martial law without Imperial sanction, and usurped command of a secured Imperial pacification zone," Krazmakor continued, heavily twisting the narrative with political genius to fit his desperate ambition. "He recklessly ordered the extreme overriding of the manifold’s regulatory governors. He explicitly ignored the documented warnings of the Vanguard engineering corps. His arrogant, untested demand for impossible extraction quotas directly caused the planetary core to overload and detonate, destroying the primary Imperial tether and killing thousands of loyal Vanguard soldiers in the subsequent, avoidable collapse."

Eshiren stared blankly at the broken terminal. The sheer, breathtaking audacity of the lie was staggering. Krazmakor wasn’t just covering up his humiliating failure to stop a single saboteur; he was actively weaponizing the destruction of his own base.

"Prince Vraek’s reckless actions constitute high treason against the Emperor and a direct, crippling assault on the economic stability of the Multiversal War effort," the broadcast declared, Krazmakor’s voice rising to a feral, commanding crescendo that demanded obedience. "By the authority of the Imperial Bloodline, I, Prince Krazmakor, hereby strip Vraek of his rank and declare the Second Expeditionary Fleet an active enemy of the Dragon God."

Eshiren leaned heavily against the concrete slab, his exhausted mind racing, trying desperately to process the monumental, terrifying shift in the political landscape.

The Praetorian Succession. The highly classified research Saelis had stolen from the Academy archives was, horribly accurate. In times of profound Imperial crisis, royal siblings didn’t unite to solve the problem or rebuild the infrastructure; they prioritized assassinating each other to ruthlessly secure the throne. Ambition always overrode duty in the Dragon Empire.

Krazmakor didn’t care that the manifold was destroyed. He didn’t care about the resistance anymore. He only saw that Vraek, the perfect, infallible, undefeated First Heir, was vulnerable, standing right next to a massive, highly public disaster.

"To all Vanguard units, orbital defense platforms, and loyalist frigates: Engage the flagship ’Obsidian Crown’ and her escort vessels at once. They are traitors to the Empire. Burn them from the sky. Show no mercy to the mutineers."

The broadcast looped, starting over with another sharp burst of static.

Eshiren backed slowly away from the terminal. The physical, catastrophic destruction of the manifold around him mirrored the sudden, violent destruction of the Imperial command structure. The Empire wasn’t hunting rebels in the slums anymore. They were hunting each other.

He had to get to the surface fast.

Eshiren moved frantically through the highly unstable wreckage, his profound physical exhaustion temporarily overridden by pure, terrifying adrenaline. He found a jagged fissure in the ceiling where the main drill-head had collapsed downward, leaving a sloped tunnel of debris leading upward toward the faint, grey light of the surface.

He scrambled up the unstable, shifting slope, the sharp, torn metal tearing at his boots and his burned hands. The smell of the air changed drastically as he climbed higher, transitioning from stale industrial chemicals to the heavy, choking scent of burning ozone, vaporized metal, and scorched earth.

He grabbed the twisted edge of a surface grating and hauled himself out of the grave.

Eshiren collapsed heavily onto his back, gasping for air, the rough, ash-covered ground of the surface scraping painfully against his ruined black tunic. He had fully expected to emerge into a scene of highly organized Imperial recovery—pristine white-armored guards sweeping the perimeter, heavy drop-ships hunting for survivors, the Inquisition actively scanning the ruins for his thermal signature.

But the ground around him was, terrifyingly deserted.

He rolled over, wincing, and pushed himself up to his knees, looking out over the landscape.

The Imperial Forward Operating Base was gone. Where the miles-wide Central Mana-Manifold and the towering blood-crystal citadel had once stood, there was now only an impossibly deep, heavily smoking crater. The jagged edges of the crater were lined with the shattered, twisted remains of Krazmakor’s command tents and supply depots. The destruction was absolute. Senreno’s charges had worked, effectively wiping the Imperial presence from the surface.

But Eshiren wasn’t looking at the crater. He was looking at the sky.

The thick, oppressive layer of grey ash that perpetually choked Azaria’s upper atmosphere had been blown away by the kinetic force of the explosion. But the sky wasn’t clear.

Shooting straight up from the center of the crater, piercing the stratosphere and extending deep into the blackness of orbit, was a colossal, blindingly bright pillar of pure, unrefined blue mana. The destruction of the manifold hadn’t stopped the core from bleeding; it had simply removed the regulatory pipe. The planet’s raw magical lifeblood was venting directly into the atmosphere, creating a highly visible beacon in the sky that could undoubtedly be seen from neighboring star systems.

But the beacon wasn’t the most terrifying thing in the sky.

High above the smoking crater, silhouetted against the dark, bleeding atmosphere, the Dragon Empire was tearing itself apart.

The pristine, blinding white dreadnoughts of Prince Vraek’s Second Expeditionary Fleet were no longer hovering in perfect, intimidating formation over the base. They were actively breaking apart under heavy, sustained fire.

Krazmakor’s jagged blood-crystal vanguard cruisers, having received the mutiny order and sensing the vulnerability of the larger ships trapped in atmospheric gravity, were viciously broadsiding the pristine white dreadnoughts at point-blank range. Bright, terrifying streaks of concentrated, super-heated plasma and heavy kinetic artillery crossed the sky in a chaotic, deadly, blinding web of destruction.

Massive explosions blossomed continuously in the upper atmosphere, raining burning, twisted metal, shattered white armor, and dying soldiers down across the ash-choked plains of Azaria like metallic meteors.

Eshiren watched in stunned silence as one of Vraek’s escort frigates, its pristine white hull heavily scorched and bleeding atmosphere, lost its gravity-tether. It slowly, agonizingly rolled over on its side and began to plummet toward the surface, a burning comet of Imperial failure destined to wipe out an entire sector when it crashed.

The Vanguard ground forces, trapped on the surface without orbital extraction and ordered to fire on their own fleet, were blindly firing heavy anti-air batteries indiscriminately into the sky, targeting anything painted white.

Eshiren stood up slowly, ignoring the pain in his ribs and the burn on his back. The fierce, hot wind from the venting mana beacon whipped his ragged black hair across his face.

The game was over. The stage-play was permanently finished. He was no longer a desperate double agent trying to carefully sabotage a mining operation from the shadows.

He had successfully triggered an apocalypse to save his family, and Prince Krazmakor had ruthlessly used the flames of that explosion to ignite a war.

Eshiren stared up at the burning, chaotic sky, his golden eyes reflecting the terrifying destruction of the Dragon Empire’s authority. The Princes were killing each other over the scraps of a dying world. The political tether to the Multiversal War was officially broken.

The Civil War had begun.